


I Have to Know

by TheBrowneBanSidhe



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Confessions, F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29880852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBrowneBanSidhe/pseuds/TheBrowneBanSidhe
Summary: With the threat of Aor looming and the clock ticking, Jester realizes that she may never get another opportunity to answer the one question she set out to discover all those months ago
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	I Have to Know

**Author's Note:**

> Contains minor spoilers for Campaign 2, ep. 126

“Cayleb?”

A pause, then, “Ja?” He had confronted and been confronted by so much of what was painful in his past over the last six hours, he almost didn’t reply. But he could never deny that voice.

She counted the others’ snores before continuing, just to be safe. It sounded thin without Beau and Yasha’s familiar breathing in the mix, but they were in the tower, and Jester counted three: Veth, Cadeuces, and…Fjord. Making the soft sounds of sleep. But not Caleb. It was dark, and the cheap tavern room reeked of ancient bodily fluids. Not how she wanted to have this conversation. But Jester felt the weight of Aor’s impending return push her forward. It might actually be now or never, and…she needed to know. “Can I ask you a question?” She heard a hard exhale.

_Please, by all that is arcane in nature, let it not be personal._ Still, his voice was soft when he replied. “Of course.”

“You said—when I asked you, earlier, if you loved Astrid—you said that you cared for her. So,” the tiefling bit her lip, “you don’t love her anymore?”

Caleb flinched. _I love you_ , he thought. “No,” he said.

“But you did, before? When you were students together, I mean.”

“Yes, Jester. I loved her then.”

She gathered all of her breath, then fast-whispered, “How do you know the difference? What does ‘care for’ mean, and what is true love, and how can you be sure? You know?”

The lines of pain on the wizards face etched deeper in the dark. It was too easy to feel hope at Jester’s words; hope that she only had a schoolgirl’s crush on Fjord, hope that she might respond to the useless devotion in his own heart. But that was, in the first place, still improbable, and in the second…bad. He was bad for her, would be bad for her, and hope was as useless as adoration.

“Well, that is a complicated question,” he began quietly. “Part of it is that you just know it when you feel it, but I am sure that that is not a satisfying answer.” What could he say that was true, and kind, and would push her back to Fjord? “I suppose it might be different for different people, especially for those with different wants and expectations from a partner. But for me, at least, it’s—was…a deep thing.” _I would kneel at your feet and give you the blood in my veins._ “Overpowering. Difficult to describe.” _You are the brightest star in my heavens. I live to hear your laughter one more time._ “But you know,” he pushed those thoughts aside, shifting slightly on his corner of the bed, “you shouldn’t feel any pressure to define your feelings. They belong to you, and, while we cannot always decide how we feel,” _traitor heart_ , “you get to choose how those emotions influence your life. If you are happy, then that can be enough.” _Please be happy. Please let that be enough._

Jester had been chewing her lower lip through the wizard’s whole answer, and now her fingers picked absently at her nails. “That makes sense, Cayleb, but here’s the thing, though—I’m happy being with all of you, with the Mighty Nein. In a kind of way that makes me afraid to lose any of you, you know?” Was that a tiny gasp? _I said something wrong—quick, make him laugh!_ “And, don’t get me wrong, some of those nights we were sleeping so close together in the dome, I was pretty sure an orgy was about to break out at any second, and that would have been pret-ty interesting, but that’s not the same as being in love-in love, I’m pretty sure.” _That_ was definitely a silent snort.

“Ja, we do blend some boundaries, don’t we,” Caleb mused. His human eyes could not see anything in that windowless room, but he knew that Jester’s could, and he felt them fastened on him. All of him, heart, mind, and body, burned to reach out and find her hand in the darkness. To find her cheek, her lips. So he tucked his hands into his armpits instead. “In my, somewhat narrow, experience,” he said, “there something more to it than that. A desire to connect to the other person, and a sense of,” _Pick something that Fjord can better offer her_ , “security. Her presence, or his presence, or theirs, makes you stronger.”

Jester pondered that for a long moment. It was true that she felt very safe with Fjord, very looked out for. But was that him making her stronger, or trying to be strong _for_ her? _I mean, Cayleb pointed out a bunch of times that I can punch Fjord way harder than…_ “Oh!” A small, involuntary squeak escaped Jester’s throat, and she held her breath for what seemed like ten minutes listening to make sure it hadn’t woken anyone up while memory after memory flooded her mind. The way Caleb showed confidence in her strength and divine power. The way he always polymorphed into whatever Jester had transformed herself as. His new-found artistic expression at TravellerCon, and now in the Tower, and all of the details that he had recreated from her past, and her present, to make her feel home, supported. Seen. ‘I’ve always felt sorry for Ruidus,’ she remembered saying in Uthedurn. And Caleb’s response: ‘Ja. Always overshadowed by her big sister,’ like he knew, and, gods, everything at Uthedurn. ‘Blueberry is my favorite,’ he had said when she tried to get him to try a black moss cupcake. And he called her Blueberry ever since.

“I hope that that was a good epiphany I heard,” Caleb whispered when she didn’t respond. “Best of luck, Jester. _Gute Nacht_.”

“Wait.”

“Mmm?”

A deep breath. _If I’m too sudden, he’ll shut me out. I have to be tricksy._ “Why wouldn’t you dance with me the last time we were at the beer hall?”

A pause. “What do you mean?”

“Before, when we were at the same tavern we were in tonight, you wouldn’t dance with me. You pushed me over to Fjord, even. Why did you do that?”

“I had things to discuss with Beauregard,” Caleb began, but couldn’t finish the sentence. It was factually true, but a lie by omission, and he knew it. _Now she will know it, too, you fool._

“Cayleb?” Jester slipped out of bed and padded silently over him, knelt down, and hugged her knees. _I need to know._ “Are you in love right now?” she asked carefully.

A long silence. There was no way out now but lies, and he owed her better than that. “Ja,” he finally whispered.

“With who?”

Another small eternity. Then the barest rasp, “With you, Jester. I’m in love with you.” Then he covered his face with his hands and shuddered.

The full weight of these last months, when she had been quite open about her fascination with Fjord, _with the idea of Fjord?_ , and Caleb had watched it all, silently supportive, sent two tears running down her nose. “You know, Cayleb,” she said as matter-of-factly as she could muster, “when you learn painting, and art theory, and stuff, blue and green are called analogous colors. It means they’re comfy together, because they’re right next to each other on the color wheel. But blue and orange,” she said, reaching out and brushing a whisp of the wizard’s ginger hair out from under his hands, “are complementary colors. They’re totally opposite, but when you put them together, they make each other just pop right out of the painting. It’s pretty amazing how cool they look together.” Caleb’s hands dropped to the ragged bedsheets. Jester took this as a sign that it was working, so she plowed ahead.

“And, you know, it is nice to be with someone who’s exactly like you always imagined, because that was what you knew. But I think,” she rested a strong hand on the side of his face, “it would be good, to be with someone you never could have imagined. Someone who needs to laugh sometimes, maybe, and can help you with making plans so you can really do the crazy things you make up in your head. Maybe better, even.”

Caleb placed a hand over Jester’s, turned his face into her palm and kissed it. Then he slid her hand away and covered it with both his own. “You don’t know how that—how you—what you mean to me,” he finally managed. “The fact that you would even consider me in that way is a greater gift than I could ever hope for. But you know what I’ve done. What I’m capable of.” Whispers became choked with tears. “I’m rotten, Jester, and I might, devote my soul to making you happy, but I would blight your life in the end, and you know that it is true.”

“Caleb Widowgast, you are not always as smart as you think you are!” Jester whisper-scolded.

For a moment, Caleb blinked, stunned, as if she had slapped him. Then he snorted and cracked a genuine smile. “Fraülein Lavorre, I see you are demonstrating yet one more reason why I desperately need you in my life.” He released her hand. “But ask yourself, why would you ever need me in yours?”

“Honestly, Cayleb? I don’t know.” Jester inched closer to his face. “But I do know that I want to find out.” And she kissed him.

The same reaction at first; Caleb froze as if stunned by Beau’s fists. But in a flash everything shifted. The frozen thing in him burst open and he pulled Jester closer to him as he kissed back. It was the kiss of a drowning man, his lips alternately devouring and begging to be devoured. Jester found herself responding to that constant dance of push and pull, thrilling to surrender, delighting to attack. It was messy. It was glorious. They were breathless when they finally parted.

“Henry would be mad at me for not asking your consent first,” Jester giggled.

Caleb snorted again between breaths. “And he would be right to be. But I tell you this now, Blueberry: until the day that I say ‘stop’, you have my full permission to do anything you want to me.”

Jester grinned. “I don’t know, I can get reaaaaalllly creative sometimes.”

Caleb still couldn’t see her face, but he heard the mischief in her voice. “I’m counting on it,” he smiled.


End file.
